Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars

Review from Yug - Monday, 04 May 2009 @ 11:47pm

I didn’t finish Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars.

I feel the need to preface my review with this statement, as I usually pride myself on only reviewing games when I’ve played them through to completion. It’s usually the reason our reviews aren’t very timely, as we want the AG team to enjoy the game for what it’s worth, not speed through it for the sake of a deadline.

And the game is by no means bad ... in fact, it’s extremely awesome. So why, in over a month of owning the game, could I not finish it?

Let me tell you a story about Yug, a very different Yug to the one you know today. We’re going to take a journey back to the year 1997 – the year scientists’ cloned dolly the sheep, Princess Diana died in a car crash, and Titanic became the biggest box office movie of all time. A little closer to home, I was in Grade 11 at the Brisbane High School – Northside Christian College, was desperately trying to build up the nerve to ask the girl I had a crush on for years out on a date (I didn’t), and was an active and devout Christian.

I spent half my afternoons afterschool at my best mate Jonathan’s house, where we would play video games, go swimming, watch movies, and choreograph lightsaber duels in the backyard (remember – this was pre Phantom Menace, Star Wars was still cool).

One afternoon in November when I visited, Jon had managed to get a cracked version of a new game for his computer off one of the local BBS sites called Grand Theft Auto. He had only just upgraded his PC with a new 3Dfx accelerated video card (Dark Forces 2: Jedi Knight being the main motivation), although the recently released Nintendo 64 was the still gaming machine of choice at the time.

Initially the game didn’t excite me all that much, featuring a top down view similar to Micro Machines, and graphics that weren’t as impressive as the latest 3D games featured on the 32 bit consoles of the era. Then, with a distinctive crunch sound, I drove over a pedestrian.

Did I just do that? Did I just run someone over? Is that a puddle of blood pooling under their body?! I felt guilty, I felt like it was wrong, but most importantly ... I wanted to do it again.

I played that game more than any other (with perhaps the exception of Starcraft) when I was in High School, and you know what? I never finished it either. The stage was set however for a love afair I would have with the GTA series right up until the present day.

Fast forward back to present day 2009, and Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars is released on the Nintendo DS, having much more in common with the original top down version I played 10 years ago than the more recent third person variations.

   

Not for lack of trying though – Chinatown Wars is actually set in the EXACT same Liberty City that Niko Bellic wandered around in Grand Theft Auto IV, only without the Alderney area and from a different perspective. If you DID play through GTA IV, you will notice some of the more distinct landmarks, but I found it difficult to navigate my way around the level based on my knowledge of the console counterpart, everything just looks a little too similar from a top down point of view.

I should correct myself here – it’s not strictly a top down view, more of a ¾ top down view, slightly angled to show off the impressive 3D engine, complimented even more by a cell shaded almost comic book style graphical aesthetic.

"I felt guilty, I felt like it was wrong, but most importantly ... I wanted to do it again."


Keeping in theme with the GTA penchant for story driven gameplay, Chinatown Wars see’s you playing as Jae, who is returning home to Liberty City with his family heirloom – a sword his grandfather Jae won in a card tournament. His plan is to deliver the sword to his Uncle Jae and avenge the death of his father Jae, but everything falls apart when he is ambushed by Jae’s from rival gangs and pretty soon it’s all out Jae on Jae war.

Actually, the cutscenes that accompany your missions as you progress through the game are the most over the top and hilarious I’ve ever seen in a GTA game to date. The missions themselves slowly progress to get you more familiar to the different controls, weapons and technology the game has to offer – which is good, since there is alot of stuff to learn.

Sure, you’ve got the usual jacking cars and shooting people mechanic, but there’s also a very detailed GPS/PDA system that allows you to do everything from selecting a location to give you an exact route, checking the internet, and reading/replying to messages.

Back is the garage storing system for your car, and your humble apartment (or other houses you can buy) has been updated to include the ability to replay any previous mission as well as store your drugs.

You know, because, you don't want to carry around ALL your drugs on you all the time.

I honestly don’t know how this one managed to get by the censorship board that also refused classification for Fallout 3 and its use of morphine and Marc Echo’s Gettin Up due to graffiti vandalism. I mean seriously, in Chinatown Wars it’s an entire sub-game where you buy, deal and trade drugs, where prices fluctuate depending on who you buy/sell to, the area it’s in, the drugs they're after, and even if there’s any significant security around. Mind you, it’s a great way to make alot of money.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a Grand Theft Auto game if there were no repercussions for your illegal actions, and the boys in blue have definitely stepped things up this time round. Shaking your wanted level isn’t as easy as it used to be – in order to drop your stars down progressively, you’ll need to actually destroy the cop cars chasing you. If you have one star, take out one cop car and everything will be hunky dory. Two stars, two cop cars will take you back down to one star, etc etc.

It sounds interesting in principal, and does make for a different dynamic – instead of trying to evade the cops, you find yourself actively waiting for them to find you. However, it does get frustrating when it seems almost every time you jack a car, there’s a cop just around the corner that spotted you. Seriously, how the hell do any of these gangs operate with so many police patrolling the streets?

Which brings me to one of the biggest flaws in Chinatown Wars, and one which I have no idea how they could avoid – the ability to see the road ahead.

In any 3rd person driving game, you have a line of sight to see where you’re going. In Chinatown Wars, the perspective is practically top down, so you can only really see as far in front of you as the screen allows – and it’s not enough. Especially when you have to keep glancing down at your GPS map to see where you’re going, only to miss the corner because it was too late to turn by the time you saw it.

"How the hell do any of these gangs operate with so many police patrolling the streets?"


Maybe I’m just not used to the Nintendo DS – I rarely play any games on it these days (perhaps because my missus is always playing Puzzle Quest on it), and when I do I find the whole experience a bit uncomfortable. The whole system makes my hands hurt after about 20 minutes, and the tiny directional pad feels petite. Then there is the other massive hurdle which does me no favours in this department either – the touch screen mechanics.

Oh I know, it’s a DS game, it has to have some gimmicks thrown in there to make it seem like it couldn’t have worked on any other system. And there’s plenty of them – you can scratch away at instant scratchie cards, tap the screen to smash a car window to escape if you drive it into water, twist cables together to hotwire a car, and use a petrol pump to fill up Molotov cocktails.

The issue is that in order to DO any of these things, you have to change the way you play on the fly. Some of the touch screen mechanisms are small and finicky (like turning the tiny screws in a car dashboard to access the wires), and my big fat thumbs simply can’t handle that – which means I turn to the stylus. It's made even more frustrating when occasionally there will be a time limit on your action, or when you've stolen a car and have to go through the same routine almost every single time. Worse is when it’s part of the gameplay itself, like throwing grenades – controlling the direction and distance using the touch screen while moving your character and firing with your left hand.

It doesn’t feel intuitive at all, it feels clumsy, and the game would have been better off without it in my opinion.

Finally, I want to briefly talk about the multiplayer modes. Yahtzee, in his quest to try new genres and game types, was keen to give it a go, so we both hooked up our DS’s to see how it stacks up. The results were a bit ... meh.

There is nothing fundamentally WRONG with the multiplayer, it just felt a bit forced. There’s a whole heap of modes – variations of vehicle races, last man standing, defend your territory, etc etc. There are some cheap thrills to be had by some of the narrow misses you might have – one moment saw Yahtzee try to run me over, only to just miss and drive straight into a wall, where I blew up his car with a Molotov cocktail while he was pinned. For the most part we just found ourselves either fighting against the combat lock on system, or spending a lot of time searching for the other player.

In spite of these issues though, the game is fun to play, without a doubt one of the best gamers games on the Nintendo DS – a big reason why I didn’t actually finish it. I simply lost interest in the main story, finding more pleasure in driving around to find side missions and expanding on my ever active drug dealing. Each to their own I say.

Pros

Same old fun Grand Theft Audo, some of the best graphics on the DS, wicked sense of humour, unique trading system, huge world to explore, one can never get enough Jae

Cons

Line of sight issues when driving cars, DS touchscreen controls are needless and finicky, story isn't as interesting as other games in the series, multiplayer has limited appeal